New Western Force campaign backs fans to take ownership

Count me in!

New Western Force campaign backs fans to take ownership
Nick Taylor The West Australian
Saturday, 4 August 2018 3:39PM

The reborn Western Force are set to become Australia’s premier fan-owned club under a resurrected Own the Force campaign.
Talks between World Series Rugby and a group of influential powerbrokers in the WA rugby community, including a number who financially backed the original 2004 Super Rugby bid, have been held to discuss the club’s ownership.
Billionaire Andrew Forrest has been bankrolling the Force since Rugby Australia cut them from Super Rugby last year.
The ownership move would allow Forrest to concentrate on the new WSR competition as it moves into expansion mode next season.
The community group is looking to launch a new Own the Force Campaign, first used in 2016 when the club was battling for survival.

The Own the Force campaign launched by Mark Sinderberry was based on the German fan ownership scheme which was set up to prevent clubs relying on sugar daddies. E.g. Boris Becker is on the Bayern Munich board. Twiggy saw what the fuck up the Rabble was so he didn't want to buy the joint outright. The Force like the Brumbies are Community based so the Pro side feeds in to the clubs.

Basically with the Own the Force the Community Rugby members who buy shares have a say at AGMs etc on who will administer the organisation. As the RA stalled the share issue due to the axing fiasco and winding the organisation down Rugby WA in its reincarnation appointed Alison to the board. There is a lot of intelligent stuff going on in the background with no leaks to the press that we don't know about.

Without the Draft, without wins, without more sponsors, broadcast revenue not enough and declining game day attendances, meant we had to look at something outside the box.

Sinders did a heap of work looking at models in different codes and countries. Seattle had a soccer team that went down club ownership pathway, even Green Bay Packers had fan ownership options as did Barca soccer and a few others. We had numerous discussions over creating something uniquely West Australian but using these clubs as a template.

This too was taking place when a chasm existed between Club Rugby and Professional Rugby in WA.

Sadly, though the ARU sucked us into launching the venture and then destroyed the whole initiative by creating the uncertainty that stopped people buying in.

Twiggy is giving us the opportunity to reincarnate the Force and to allow us to grow the game within his competition. Give the man a knighthood.

I'm trying to get my head around this, and an appreciation of what is being intended to be achieved.

The current position, as I understand it, is that Minderoo, Forrest's company, owns all rights to the Force and to World Series Rugby (WSR).

Mindaroo acquired the Force from RugbyWA after it was released back to RugbyWA by Rugby Australia (RA), having been removed from the Super Rugby competition.

Mindaroo took over what was left of the Force entity from RugbyWA's Administrators (or from RugbyWA, I could not understand this bit), RugbyWA having a substantial debt owing to RA over legal costs which it could not repay.

In any event, Mindaroo or the Administrators fixed the debt situation with RA, Mindaroo paid RugbyWA some working capital, and took over the lease of RugbyWA headquarters, sub letting part of the premises back to RugbyWA.

At this point therefore, Mindaroo owned the Force, RugbyWA had no significant debts, and was responsible only for running the local club competitions, and Mindaroo went on with its own business of getting the Force up and running again, and developing the WSR concept.

Now Mindaroo (or somebody) is flying the concept that its wholly owned Force be sold or transfered to another yet to be defined entity as a "Club", to be (presumably) entirely independent of Mindaroo but playing in the WSR competition.

To that end it is proposed (I think) that there be a public float of the new entity and that some "serious" heavyweights of rugby in WA (who were involved in the initial Force concept in 2004) be involved as part of a community group to run with the public listing, presumably injecting some capital of their own, and/or their extensive experience. RugbyWA as a body will not be involved unless if by Council resolution they seek to invest in the float.

I think you had better seek counsel on this one Fulvio, sounds complicated, Lavin could probably help, but be warned, those bloody lawyers charge really high fees for very little service, a bit like real esta....oh don't worry

I'm not sure what you're driving at Fulvio, but that sounds (albeit laced with a fair amount of your traditional glass half empty cynicism) about right.

Personally, I think this is a pretty savvy move by Minderoo. It achieves several very good things
Ensures that the Force

maintains it's Community connection

Adds to the buy in from the regular punter

Frees Minderoo up to undertake the business of building a competition in a few short months

removes the accusation that Force will be unduly favoured in the new competition over teams that aren't owned by the competition organisers.

I guess there are some bad things, like the fact that Force doesn't own it's IP, that's on loan from RA to RugbyWA and then transferred to Minderoo for the purposes of running the Force professional arm. the corporate paperwork must be more tangled than PRaetorian by now and it seems that the Force has been bounced around a bunch of owners, this would have to make the structure and goals of the operation pretty unclear.

But, I think most of the bad stuff could be overcome as long as people are keen to work together and not seek temporary advantage and the good stuff is worth chasing.

Without the Draft, without wins, without more sponsors, broadcast revenue not enough and declining game day attendances, meant we had to look at something outside the box.

Sinders did a heap of work looking at models in different codes and countries. Seattle had a soccer team that went down club ownership pathway, even Green Bay Packers had fan ownership options as did Barca soccer and a few others. We had numerous discussions over creating something uniquely West Australian but using these clubs as a template.

This too was taking place when a chasm existed between Club Rugby and Professional Rugby in WA.

Sadly, though the ARU sucked us into launching the venture and then destroyed the whole initiative by creating the uncertainty that stopped people buying in.

Twiggy is giving us the opportunity to reincarnate the Force and to allow us to grow the game within his competition. Give the man a knighthood.

Agreed Hansie, lets not also forget that the RA were complicit in ignoring the documentation from the WA Government and Rugby WA in relation to the funding. This is while paying off directors at the Rebels to ensure they can sell the Rabble for a $1 while avoiding legal action (which would have been a waste of time as the RA were never going to cut them).

A quick search on IP Australia states that the RA still own it and nothing has been transferred to Minderoo or Rugby WA. This is despite the RA telling the Government in response to the Senate Inquiry that they had sold the IP back to Rugby WA.